Decentralized Vibration Control With Networked Embedded Systems

Abstract

The early promise of centralized active control technologies to improve the performance of large scale, complex systems has not been realized largely due to the inability of centralized control systems to “scale up”; that is, the inability to continue to perform well when the number of sensors and actuators becomes large. Now, recent advances in Micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS), microprocessor developments and the breakthroughs in embedded systems technologies, decentralized control systems may see these promises through. A networked embedded system consists of many nodes that possess limited computational capability, sensors, actuators and the ability to communicate with each other over a network. The aim of this decentralized control system is to control the vibration of a structure by using such an embedded system backbone. The key attributes of such control architectures are that they be scalable and that they be effective within the constraints of embedded systems. Toward this end, the decentralized vibration control of a simply supported beam has been implemented experimentally. The experiments demonstrate that the reduction of the system vibration is realized with the decentralized control strategy while meeting the embedded system constraints, such as a minimum of internode sensor data communication, robustness to delays in sensor data and scalability.